Five States of Carolina
by ShirouHokuto
Summary: Carolina and the other women of Project Freelancer. Written for Yuletide 2012; brief Carolina/479er and a hint of York/Carolina.


**Author's Note: ** _Written as a Yuletide 2012 treat for zoamh! And a pleasure it was to write, too._

* * *

**Five States of Carolina**

South is all talk and flash, no bang, no substance; there's no getting anything out of her unless North is there to back her up. Carolina tries, though. God help her, she tries, and all she ever gets back is spitting rage.

Except once. There's this one time they tie in a spar, a perfect deadlock, neither of them able to pull off a finishing move. After FILSS calls it and they untangle themselves, South rips her helmet off and says, "That one should've been mine, bitch."

"Not according to FILSS."

"Bullshit," South says; her cheeks are flushed, strands of blonde and purple hair hanging lank and damp with sweat over one eye, but she's grinning. "I fucking had you, don't forget it."

She walks off, yelling for her brother to get his lazy ass in gear, and Carolina wonders if other people get to see that smile of South's more often, whenever she grinds them into the dirt.

* * *

It should be easy to talk to CT. There's something about her baby face that makes a person want to talk, to reassure her when she's worried and comfort her when she's down and just - open up to her. Tell her anything.

Carolina never can manage it. It's not Connie's fault, really. Carolina doesn't have time for anything - for anyone - but the best, and Connie - CT - well. When she's on she's amazing, but when she's off she can't ever seem to get back on track; she makes one little mistake and then she can't stop making them. Carolina feels for her, really she does, but she can't waste energy on someone who isn't measuring up. Casual greetings if they pass in the corridors, orders if they're on a mission together, those are the only things Carolina ever says to CT out loud.

Maybe, when the war's over, they can sit down and have a real talk.

* * *

Piloting's not the only thing Four Seven Niner is the best at, and Carolina finds that out the fun way, shoved up against a wall not even halfway out of her armor and Four Seven Niner's thigh between her legs, filthy talk hissing into Carolina's left ear as Four Seven Niner's hands strip off her breastplate and start doing something obscenely nice to that sensitive spot Carolina has just between her collarbones.

Carolina's always given as good as she gets, and she digs her practical blunt fingernails as hard as she can into Four Seven Niner's back, grinds against her leg, and says, "You kiss all your girlfriends with that mouth?"

"Oh, I do a lot of things with this mouth," Four Seven Niner says, and ten minutes later, after they've gotten a little more privacy and a lot more horizontal, Carolina gets to find out a few of them. The one thing she never does get out of Four Seven Niner is the woman's name, but that's only to be expected in Project Freelancer, the land of nicknames that stick. In public or in private, everyone's got a mask on the _Mother of Invention_.

It's just too bad Carolina doesn't bring along a camera when she strong-arms York into hacking the personnel files, because the look on their faces after they see the name "Tudor, Virginia Elizabeth" at the top of Four Seven Niner's file has to be worth a few thousand words.

* * *

She should have known, that's all Carolina can think. She should've known from the beginning what Tex was, what it meant for a woman who never took her helmet off and went by her mother's old nickname to show up and take Carolina's place at the top. She should have known that the Director would go that far, because she knows that in some ways he's just like her; there's no such thing as a limit when there's something either of them wants that's supposed to be out of their reach.

And yet Carolina hadn't known, not till she'd heard him scream Allison's name, her AI and the others screaming with him, fragments of a younger man's voice.

The knowledge burns. It burns inside Carolina, a fire she can't control, and she's _always_ been the one in control, but once she gets out of the medical wing (all right, sneaks out, but she feels fine, damn it) she can't stop herself from finding Tex.

_Do you know?_ is the question on the tip of Carolina's tongue. Has Tex known the whole time what she was? Has she always known just how much she was humiliating Carolina? But face to face with Tex again, she can only stare at that black helmet, wondering what the Director put under it, wondering if she could yank it off and see -

"Carolina?" Tex says, and suddenly Carolina isn't so sure she should have left the medical wing. That burning knowledge is still running hot through her veins, but her knees are weak, unsteady, and Eta and Iota are muttering unhappily in her ears.

Tex catches her arm before she can turn away and says, "What are you doing?" Her tone is brusque but not harsh, and for a moment, even with the helmet's filters in the way, Carolina hears her mother's voice.

Then Tex starts to pull her closer and Carolina shakes her hand off, slaps it away when Tex reaches for her again even though her legs threaten to give out when she steps back. "Damn you," she says, "don't touch me - you don't even know what you're doing -"

"Sounds like someone woke up on the wrong side of a hospital bed," says Tex, "and you'd better get back into one right now, because I'm not fighting you like this."

"Damn you," Carolina says again, and she leaves with the weight of Tex's stare on her back.

It doesn't matter what Tex knows, she decides. Carolina's not going to lose to her, not any more.

* * *

Twenty-six hours is a long time to spend hanging off the side of an ice cliff, nothing but a well-used grappling hook and sheer willpower keeping her from a cold hard fall, no company but shattered thoughts and splintered memories. The first couple of hours she's hoping someone from the _Mother of Invention_ finds her before Maine decides to come after her again; the next two or three she hopes Maine does find her first, because she's going to tear out that son of a bitch's spine and feed it to him. Around hour ten she doesn't care who finds her as long as they hurry it the fuck up, but by hour eleven she's pretty sure that no one's coming.

The sixteenth hour is when she jams her free hand into a small crack in the ice and starts digging. Ten hours later she's got a nice little cave hollowed out, deep enough that she can reel in her grappling hook and finally get out of the wind, and she can tell from the cracks and reflections at the back that there are more caves and tunnels within the cliff that she can get to, make her way up and out.

They must think she's dead up there. Dead, and her armor lost or damaged so badly that it's not worth trying to find her body. Assholes. York at least ought to have the decency -

She's not going to think about York. She's got a giant ice cliff to tunnel through, and then - well. Then there's some people who aren't going to see her coming.

Carolina punches a fracture point in the ice and gets to work.


End file.
